What Happened to Us?
by punkydiva17
Summary: *Completed* 10 shot iPod challenge. Song is "What Happened to Us?" by Hoobastank. Undertaker and Michelle reflect on their lives when Michelle leaves Mark to cheat.


_**I thought it was too good to be true;**_

_**I found somebody who understands me**_

_**Someone who would help me to get through**_

_**And fill the emptiness I had inside me**_

Mark watched from the end of the bed as Michelle prepared herself to go out. It was becoming a frequent habit as of late. Going out with the girls, she always told him. He wasn't stupid; he could see through it. He'd been around the block a few times and to say he was naive would have been inaccurate. He saw the way that Michelle was with him now; reserved, quiet. The kisses were becoming infrequent, the lovemaking almost ceased.

It was killing him, the constant suspicions. Even traveling together didn't seem to help their relationship. He worked hard at it, desperate not to die alone. His two marriages had already ended in divorce, wreaking havoc on his kids. He was wishing like crazy that he could make it work out with Michelle. She was a beauty; WWE's resident All American Diva.

_**But you kept inside**_

_**And I just denied**_

_**Somethings that we should have both said**_

He watched her, hair cascading down her back like a bleached blonde waterfall. She was dressed in a little black minidress, a gold locket he had bought her a few weeks ago perched between her breasts. The idea of her wearing the locket out with whomever she was with made him sick. Made him angry enough to want to snatch it from around his neck. But he was dead silent. Mute. Watching her with that trademark Deadman stare he had perfected over the years.

He thought dating a Diva would be the perfect solution to his woman problems. After all, his marriages had ended because in the end, the women couldn't make the sacrifice of having him away for over three hundred days a year. He had thought Sara was different; but in the end, she was the same, asking him to take time off from the road. And as the nagging injuries piled up, he worked harder, just to be stubborn. There was a lot of communication that was missing there and he felt terrible that the marriage had ended the way it did. Sometimes, late at night when he tried to sleep, waiting for Michelle to come back, he'd think of the way things ended with Sara. The way she had looked at him with sad eyes as she had gathered the girls and left the house. Mark had just about imploded at the moment. It was easily the worst moment of his life.

_**I knew it was too good to be true**_

_**Cause I'm the only one who understands me**_

Michelle was staring back at Mark from the mirror. She could see the look in his eyes. She wondered where things went wrong between them. Why was she doing this, getting ready to go out and meet up with Randy Orton?

She supposed it was the age difference. At that point, she was more or less looking at any reason to justify what she was doing to Mark. She was certain that he knew; she could say a lot of things about the man, but she could never say he was stupid. He was perceptive, observant, and in his dead silence she knew he was contemplating his next move.

Things with Randy had started out innocently enough. Mark had been out with an injury and Randy had offered to ride with her to keep her company. She knew Randy back from her days as a Diva Search contestant, and figured that he had the best intentions in mind. She applied her lip gloss to her lips, leaning closer into the mirror. Mark's eyes never left her. It made her feel uneasy.

One thing had led to another one night while they had gone out drinking and the next thing she knew, she was shacked up in Randy's hotel room, wearing nothing but a bed sheet. The thing that had struck her was that after it had happened, she wasn't half as devastated about it as she thought she would be. Randy had gone to work out and she had just silently grabbed her clothing, put it all back on, fixed herself up and came up with an excuse to tell Mark for why she hadn't come back to the hotel.

_**What happened to us?**_

_**We used to be so perfect**_

_**Now we're lost and lonely**_

__Mark always wondered who it was. The guy that she was seeing on the side. It had to be one of the younger guys. He tried to think back to who played nice to him. Of course, being the most respected guy in the locker room only left the option open to absolutely everybody.

He supposed it was natural for her to cheat. After all, she was still young, almost fifteen years his junior, and he was suffering with nagging injury after nagging injury. His mind always screamed at him when he tried to justify her reasons for looking elsewhere. He was a doting, devoted boyfriend, giving her everything she needed, supporting her and giving her what space she needed. But at the end of the day, she was still off with another man, doing things that made Mark's blood boil with rage.

There wasn't a lot of justification, and he wondered just what he was going to do. Was he going to sit by and wait for the relationship to just disintegrate and shrug it off as a loss? Or was he going to try and fight for Michelle? He wasn't even sure if fighting for her was going to be worth it. Or if he wanted to. Even when she touched him now, he could sense her reservations, her guilt.

_**What happened to us?**_

_**And deep inside I wonder**_

_**Did I lose my only...**_

Michelle tousled her hair and checked her reflection in the mirror. She turned to Mark. "How do I look?"

"Great," he told her, forcing a smile to cross his features. "As usual."

"I should be back in by about one, but if I'm not..."

"Don't wait up," he finished. She gave him this talk all the time. He was more or less becoming numb to it. She stood, stricken for a few seconds by the flat tone in his voice. His eyes were fixated on the golden locket gleaming from her chest.

"You know it," she replied, her tone devoid of energy. She gathered her black sequined clutch off the nightstand, slipping her keycard into her purse. He couldn't believe her nerve to wear the locket out. Michelle shot him one more look before leaving the room, closing the door softly behind her.

_**Remember they thought we were too young**_

_**To really know what it takes to make it?**_

_**But we had survived off what we have done**_

_**So we could show them all that they're mistaken**_

Mark turned on the television, but no matter how many TV shows he flipped through, nothing could catch his interest. He sighed, shutting the television off. Every night when Michelle left, he felt another little piece of himself die. It wasn't healthy. And eventually he knew that one of them was going to break and the relationship would go the way of his Punisher gimmick. It would be over, done.

The phone rang, jolting him out of his thoughts. He sighed, answering the phone. "Yeah?"

"Hey."

Mark's shoulders slumped. It was Dave Batista. He was a friend of his, but he just wasn't in the mood to talk. "Hey, Dave. What's up?"

"A few of the guys are going out tonight. We wanted to see if you wanted to come. Shane said we're catching some UFC shit down at the bar."

Mark sighed. "I don't know if I'm up for it tonight, man."

"Michelle go out again?" Mark knew that what was happening with him and Michelle wasn't necessarily a secret in the locker room. Dave Batista was one of the first guys to find out. Mark had flown off the handle thinking Michelle was seeing Dave and had physically attacked him. When he had finally believed Dave, he had felt terrible abusing him in such a terrible manner. Dave, to his credit, had been a hell of a sport, telling Mark he would have done the same thing.

"Yeah."

"Taker, I hate to tell you, but this is getting unhealthy."

"I know. I'm just not sure what I should be doing here," he confessed. "I want to make it work. I just want to be with somebody and I just want it to work out."

"Love. Pain in the ass," Dave replied. Mark nodded; he and Dave related on the level that Dave's two marriages had ended in divorce, with Dave cheating on his current ex-wife Angie.

"Tell me about it. Whoever came up with the fucking concept needs to be shot," Mark spat.

"Come on, Mark. What do you say?"

"I don't know..."

"You can't coop yourself up in that fucking room," Dave told him. Mark sighed. He supposed Dave was right.

"Fine. I'll be right down."

_**But who could have known?**_

_**The lies that we grew**_

_**Until we could see right through them**_

__Michelle drove along the dark roads towards Randy's hotel on the other end of town. It was only going to be a matter of time before Mark found out that she was fucking Randy on the side, and when he found out who it was, she shuddered to think what he was going to do.

She checked her reflection in the rearview mirror. It wasn't that Mark was a bad boyfriend, or even that he was bad in the sack. It was just a one night stand that had turned into a fling, something that she couldn't particularly justify. She didn't want to even think about justifying it to anybody either.

She was catching a lot of heat in the locker room with the girls, most of them who were friends with Mark, over the affair. In a moment of carelessness, Kelly Kelly had caught Michelle and Randy in the shower and it had taken almost everything Randy and Michelle had to beg Kelly not to tell Mark. But it hadn't stopped her from telling Ashley, Maria, Nattie and Victoria.

Victoria. She shook her head. That woman didn't get the picture. She had always had the biggest crush on Mark. Mark liked her well enough as a friend, but a woman like Victoria wasn't his type. Michelle couldn't understand how in the hell she was so jealous and riled up over the thought of Victoria and Mark together. It's not like she was being faithful here.

She sighed. She knew she should be feeling guilty for inflicting so much pain on Mark. But she didn't. Everything around her told her to feel guilty, but no matter how hard she tried, she just couldn't. There was no emotional connection with Mark, there was nothing but sex with Randy. Sure, Mark tried his damnedest to give her the emotional comfort and support she needed, but the truth was she wasn't sure that she wanted it.

_**Remember they knew we were too young?**_

_**We still don't know what it takes to make it**_

She thought back to when she and Mark had started dating. She had heard the whispers, the comparisons of herself to a vulture. Mark had been vulnerable when she had gotten to him, dealing with the trauma of his wife leaving with the kids. He would spend his time sitting down at the hotel bar with a glass of Jack Daniels – straight – his hand on the Sara tattoo that adorned his throat, fighting the urge to just break down.

Michelle didn't think of herself as a slut. She knew what she wanted and she went for it. That's just the way that she was. And she knew she was hurting Mark; but she didn't feel bad because the people around her told her that she should be feeling bad.

She pulled the car into the parking lot of the hotel. Randy was waiting for her. He was just what she needed to get Mark off of her mind.

_**We could have made it work**_

_**We could have found a way**_

_**We should have done our best**_

_**To see another day**_

_**But we kept it all inside**_

_**Until it was too late**_

_**But now we're both alone**_

_**The consequence we paid**_

_**For throwing it all away**_

_**For throwing it all away**_


End file.
